Avalanche Involvement, January 5, 2012

Thursday (Jan. 5, 2012) I went for a day of ski touring in the Black Prince area, and we had an incident.  We were skiing a smaller hill on the West side of the highway (Purple Prince), NNE of Mt. Black Prince just North of Warspite Creek (Lat,Lon 50.721351,-115.230875).  The slope faces NE, is about 400m high and is fully treed.  We followed the uptrack (set by a couple of guys on a dawn patrol) to the top of the knob.  We saw that the new snow had been blown over the ridge and onto our ski run.  We dug a pit, and found 3 medium to hard layers 50, 60 and 70 cm. down, sudden planar failures.  This pit was dug very close to the ridge and so we took into account that these layers could be due to wind effect.   We skied a line nearly directly above our car and then hiked back up again.  This time, Peter (my partner for the day and a local) thought about heading further along the ridge to try and sample another line which he had seen from the road.  Walking along the ridge we found the slope to be very steep at the start and slightly corniced.  A small ski cut along the top of the slope produced nothing, so Peter dropped in.  The line was out of my sight.

The next thing I noticed was that Peter was yelling.  It was muffled through the trees and I wasn't sure if he was hooting for joy or in trouble.  I was split as to whether he had triggered something or whether he was just having fun.  I saw small spurts of powder fly up.  "Maybe he's just getting some face shots" I thought.  Then I saw the entire line of trees below sway downhill in unison.  Peter was still yelling.  Now I was sure it was an avalanche.

I kept waiting at the top, sort of dumbfounded.  He had clearly triggered the slide below the ski cut.  So could I venture out there safely?  I decided to throw all caution to the wind, screamed HELP a couple times and then skied after him.  Just out of sight from my vantage point, Pete's tracks led straight over a crown, about knee deep.  But the weird thing was that knee deep was the depth to the ground.  He had clearly hit a shallow spot on on the nose and ended up smack in the middle of the slide.  Thank goodness he was still yelling, I thought.  I never even pulled out my beacon.  I carefully made my own way down, survival skiing through the thick forest on the skier's right, and eventually found him in a copse of small trees, sitting on the top and complaining of a nosebleed.

Pete was unharmed save for a good slit down his chin.  I pulled out the first aid kit and proceeded to try and stick any number of bandages to his bearded chin, but nothing would work.  I was trying to use steri-strips to seal up the cut, but they woudn't stick to the hair at all.  I settled on making a "chin strap" like those seen on Football helmets, from some medical tape and a big bandage.  My gauze was suspiciously missing from my kit.  He wouldn't stop bleeding, and he had lost all his gear (except his backpack and helmet).  I had him drink a bottle of fruit juice, take an energy gel and two ibuprofen's.  I checked both his legs for breaks even though he said he was fine.

My first plan of escape was for me to go in front, giving Peter my poles and try to set a track that he could walk on.  I strapped our packs together and carried both.  That way we could hopefully get out quick.  Just as I was starting, Pete noticed one of his skis and a pole wedged into a tree.  I went and got them, then kept moving.  Pete wanted to stick around and look for his other ski, but I wanted him to get moving before he went all woozy from the blood loss.  So there we were, on a 35 degree slope, traversing towards the parking area.  I was trying to make as nice of a track out as I could so that peter could stay upright on one ski.  We slowly moved down and South towards the uptrack.  It seemed to take ages, the packs were outrageously difficult to ski with, and pete was still bleeding pretty heavily.

We finally hit the uptrack and another group we had seen 10 minutes before the slide was just getting ready to head back up.  They changed their plans and helped us out to the car.  At one point, one of the snowboarders made a sled from his board and towed Pete over the flat ground.  I went ahead at the last minute and warmed up the car, and then got ready to play ambulance.

We got to the Canmore hospital at 3:45, my best estimate of the avalanche time would be somewhere around 12:15-12:30.  An hour and a half there, and Pete sported 11 stitches.  The most surprising thing about this incident was how hard it was to get to the road, even though we were in plain sight and only a few hundred meters above, and the victim was very mobile.  It probably took a solid 2 to 2 and a half hours to get from the debris field to the car.

I'm writing this to get it onto paper.  The main thing is that we ignored some of the forecaster's advice, and also got unlucky.  Forecasters had warned against skiing N, NE and E aspects, we skied a NE aspect.  The slide started not on a known weak layer, but rather on a rogue shallow spot.  Why that area was so shallow is beyond me, it's right below the ridgeline and on the leeward side.  Heck right above it was a small cornice!  The slide was small, but it still ripped out all available terrain.  Trees are what stopped it from propagating further.  We skied below treeline, where hazard was rated MODERATE but we still were skiing steep lines with open areas here and there.  We pushed things a bit and got bitten for doing so.  I wasn't standing where I had a good view of the run, but rather where it would be easiest to enter the run.  My first aid skills are also lacking.  I'm trained in the lifeguarding stream, and all I've learned to do is to stem any bleeding, make the victim comfortable and wait for an ambulance.  I need to take some wilderness first aid.  I also need to get a helmet for touring, Peter's had a good ding from hitting a tree.

Let's all be safe out there.  I believe that I was a bit complacent due to the below treeline location, and didn't really think everything through.  I'll never treat below treeline skiing the same.  Peter wrote up his own version at his blog, which can be read here, it's a good read.